Mitt Romney’s ORCA program couldn't stay afloat

Mitt Romney’s campaign boasted for the past two weeks that it would outgun President Barack Obama’s team in the Democrats’ area of strength — voter-targeting. It would use a state-of-the-art system called ORCA, named for the killer whale, that cost substantial resources to build over months.

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Numerous Republicans in and around the Romney campaign called the ORCA platform a total bust, stranding thousands of volunteers without a way of reporting data back to headquarters and leaving Romney central command without a clear view of developments on the ground.

The system was not shared with officials outside a small group in Boston and was kept largely a secret until the immediate lead-up to Election Day. The system was beta-tested on its own but not within technical infrastructure of the Boston TD Garden, where the Romney campaign’s massive War Room was set up. That accounted for a number of the problems, officials conceded, even as they protested to POLITICO the depth of the Election Day meltdown.

Three sources described the campaign to POLITICO as “flying blind” on Tuesday in terms of targeting, with ORCA — which had a pricetag of hundreds of thousands of dollars — failing. There was another sizable allocation of funds for emergency robocalls to goose turnout late in the day in key areas identified by ORCA, but those were never put to widespread use.

Romney political director Rich Beeson defended ORCA as a first step toward a larger-scale voter turnout system that the GOP needs to develop, telling POLITICO that the data flow was imperfect but still significant.

“Did it work perfectly? No. But did we get a hell of a lot of good data? Yes,” Beeson said. “When I needed answers, I could get them.”

One of the problems, Beeson said, was that ORCA was never tested in the context of the TD Garden. When so much data started flowing into the facility, it was perceived to be a hack and rejected, Beeson said.

“In all the other testing we had, we didn’t have that issue,” Beeson said. “When you’re dealing with 34,000 people across the country, there’s going to be any number of issues, whether it’s user error or smart phone didn’t work. The system wasn’t perfect and we never claimed it would be. But as we go through cycles, this is the beginning of something that’s going to be very, very effective.”

In any case, Beeson said, the campaign had only a few months to assemble the turnout system: “You’re sort of building an airplane as you take off from the aircraft carrier.”

Romney digital director, Zac Moffatt — who did not oversee Project ORCA — conceded there were some problems but insisted the system generally worked.

“I’m not going to blow smoke,” he said. “I’m not saying there weren’t challenges.”

But he insisted that people were taking their own individual experiences and extrapolating that the entire system failed, when in fact it worked overall.

“A lot of data came into the system that we have on file now,” he said, although he couldn’t answer questions about whether it was continuous throughout the day or simply at the end. He insisted that 91 percent of all counties reported into the system, 14.3 million voters were accounted for as “voted,” and 5,397 reports of voting issues were reported, such as broken machines and a dearth of ballots.

“Look, we experienced challenges through it,” Moffatt said, but he insisted, “It allowed us to continue our GOTV efforts and allowed us at such a massive scale to track voting irregularities.”

Like where? “Florida, Ohio. We were seeing different things coming in through the alerts.”

Readers' Comments (76)

Who needs something called "ORCA" when you can effectively communicate the Founding Principles of this great republic, and explain to people how that's FAR SUPERIOR to the rotten leftist totalitarianism of Barack Obama?

Hey jingo-bells, you've got nothing to show and no arguments so you resort to name calling? But don't worry we hear that you Luddites have a great new communication device that will be ready for the next round. They're calling it a Fax Machine. ROFLMAO

Just curious Dumbdemon, WHICH progressive are you defending? Mitt or Barack? The center-left progressive lost, while the dumbmasses gave the communist progressive 4 more years. Which one of these guys are you particularly enamored with?

Wait a sec...I thought Obama was a socialist. You repugs cant even get your insults straight? So which is he..."socialist" or "communist".....Which ever fake insult sticks on the wall longest, right? I bet you don't even know the difference between either.

Anyone who thought that Robme had any idea what he was doing in this race deserves to be taken to the cleaners. Who knew that we had so many idiot billionaires lying around. The richer they are the easier is to milk them. TV and advertising executives just saw the biggest transfer of wealth (right into their own pockets).

But the biggest loser of them all turned out to be Karl Rove. What an imbecile, lol...

I love it when Palin et al. made derisive comments about Obama's background as a community organizer. It is something they know nothing about yet makes them feel smug.

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Still worried about Sarah Palin? LOL! Never fear, your communitythug hack from Chicago will be able to crash this economy WITHOUT any input AT ALL from Sarah.Of course, Obama'll blame it on Bush.... What a total lowlife you people have re-elected.. I've protected me and mine, so you lefties have fun with this CRASHED economy that you've caused.

Mitt Romney: Tell your employees what is in the best interests of your business and therefore their jobs and their future in the upcoming elections.

Murray Energy Fires 163 Workers, Citing a ‘War on Coal’

Murray Energy Corp., the largest closely held coal company in the U.S., is laying off 163 workers at three subsidiaries, citing a “War on Coal” by the Obama administration.

"The decision to lay people off was difficult and complicated. First, the Obama Administration’s War on Coal has already destroyed coal markets and resulted in the need for some layoffs,” Gary Broadbent, a spokesman for St. Clairsville, Ohio-base Murray Energy, wrote in an e-mail today.

“Second, the layoffs were more severe due to the anticipation of further damage to coal markets caused by the Obama Administration’s disastrous War on Coal.”

Chief Executive Officer Robert Murray read a prayer to workers asking God’s forgiveness for “decisions that we are now forced to make to preserve the very existence of any of the enterprises that you have helped us build,” the Washington Post reported.

Jingo. You might be interested to know that the polls showed that on election day 51%

of the people who voted stated that they still blamed Bush 43 for the state of the economy.

You can cling to whatever delusion you want but you can't dispute the facts.

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What EXACTLY are you citing as a fact? If you're claiming that it's a "fact" that 51% of the people polled were THAT gd dumb, you may be correct. This MASSIVE level of abject stupidity and dependancy caused the downfall of the Roman Empire as well as a few other great nations.

Jepers, I will actually ENJOY watching you leftists crash this economy as deeply and painfully as we're witnessing in coastal Jersey and NY. Hunger and wont are mighty good teachers. Nothing delusional involved.